


The Learning Curve

by straponselina



Series: In the Picture [2]
Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: (both romantic and familial), Canon-Typical Violence, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, OOC, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn (ish), Unhealthy Relationships, machismo attitudes resulting in unsafe sex :/, this is a lalo simp fic so buckle in!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:26:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straponselina/pseuds/straponselina
Summary: In the days following Lalo's release, Lalo and Nacho come to know both themselves and each other a little better.A sequel to "In the Picture," this fic was written for Lacho Week! Each chapter corresponds with the different daily themes: dreams, regret, thrill-seeking, loyalty, domesticity, betrayal, and scars.
Relationships: Amber (Better Call Saul)/Jo (Better Call Saul), Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga, Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/OMC, Ignacio "Nacho" Varga/Amber (Better Call Saul)/Jo (Better Call Saul)
Series: In the Picture [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1828318
Comments: 66
Kudos: 69
Collections: Lacho Week 2020





	1. Nacho from 5 to 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nacho gets high, does some navel-gazing, and has a frightful dream._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set right before "Bad Choice Road."

It had been six days since Nacho heard from Lalo last. Six days since Lalo had panted across a dozen power lines, spinning a tale of a fellow inmate, one with broad shoulders and long lashes. Six days since Nacho had veered to the side of an empty highway to tug at himself like a teenager, until Lalo had finally ordered him to _come for me, amorcito_.

It had been six nights since Nacho had dreamed of Lalo driving him into the moonlit scrublands, pulling him out of his car, kissing him gently, and telling him _amorcito, está bien._ Nacho’s fingers ghosted over his own lips as he recalled those words, reading the shapes his mouth made around them like braille. _Está bien._

“What, baby?”

Nacho blinked himself back into reality. He followed the voice, over his right shoulder. Amber was looking back at him through hooded, imploring eyes. She had her knees pulled into her chest, leaning back against the armrest of the red leather loveseat. Silver light from the television flickered across her face, casting deep shadows under her cheekbones. Nacho raised his eyebrows. “Hm?”

“Did you say something?”

Nacho shook his head.

Amber hummed. Her eyes drifted around the room before resting on the coffee table. Nacho watched as she plucked a hand torch and a cloudy glass pipe from amongst the debris. She met his eyes as she lit the pipe. He felt the abrasive smell of meth might burn the hairs in his nose.

“You want some?”

Again, Nacho shook his head. 

“Mmm.” The sound vibrated against the skin of Nacho’s left shoulder. His eyes followed as Amber passed the pipe to Jo like a spectator in a slow-motion game of tennis. Jo remained fixated on the TV as she took the pipe. She was the one who picked the movie. She had squealed when Amber flicked past Turner Classic Movies, showing a bird’s-eye view of weather, yellow hands dealing from a deck of tarot cards. “This is my mom’s favorite movie!” Nacho was disappointed to find it was in French. He kept forgetting to read the subtitles.

Jo flicked the torch under the pipe and he turned back to the screen. Now, it showed two young women in a cafe. The scene was in black and white. Nacho wondered if it was still the same movie as the jaundiced tarot card reading they saw a second ago. His eyes snapped back to Jo as she began coughing violently, but her sputtering soon turned into a fit of giggling. He turned back to the TV. 

The subtitles read _if it’s cancer, I’ll kill myself. I might as well be dead already._

Nacho pushed Jo off of him and stood, swiping a baggie of pot and some rolling papers from the cluttered coffee table. He stalked off toward the bedroom.

Sitting cross-legged on the king sized bed, he absentmindedly rolled a joint and returned to the words sitting in the back of his head. _Está bien. Amorcito. Está bien._ He thought back to his father’s house, how he had crawled back there with fresh bullet wounds in his shoulder and gut, how he had left blood stains on the same couch he spilled grape juice on when he was six. His chest felt tight. He brought the joint to his lips and imagined the tickle of course hair beneath his nose.

Nacho knew Lalo. Knew him well enough, at least. If he could close his eyes and hear Lalo whispering words that were soft and sweet, it was only because they were the same kind of words that littered the romantic rancheras he loved to sing. _Amorcito_. _Está bien._ He felt foolish. The scene Lalo had described on their call was rough, maybe even a little degrading. But that one humble command and its endearing embellishment— _come_ _for me, amorcito_ — had unleashed something in his psyche. He wanted someone to hold him. Someone to care for him. Someone to tell him that everything was going to be alright. Lalo could never be that someone. He knew that. Lalo might call himself a sentimentalist, and Nacho might dream silly dreams of being swept up in his embrace, but in the cold light of the day Nacho could see Lalo for what he was. 

He needed to go for a drive.

When he walked past the living room, Amber was asleep, her head in Jo’s lap. He remembered the first night he met Jo. She had sat in that very same spot, Amber by her side. It was a month after Nikki moved back to Tulsa, leaving Nacho and Amber alone in that big, cavernous house. When Jo showed up, Nacho pulled Amber into the kitchen to speak with her in private. “I got lonely,” she said with a shrug. His heart sank. Nacho had always felt guilty about feeding her addiction in exchange for company and affection, but he felt even worse realizing he had never considered she felt just as lonely as he did. He never thought about how she spent her time while he drove around Albuquerque, pushing drugs and strong-arming the status quo. Jo’s presence could be a good thing. The times he walked in on Amber and Jo together, he felt the same way he’d felt when Nikki told him she was going home to reconnect with her mother. Happy that she had found someone to hold her, but jealous that he was still groping blindly in the dark. Part of him loved Amber, and that same part was coming to love Jo, too. He knew he wasn’t good for them, but it eased his mind just a little knowing that they might be good for each other. 

Now, Jo stared unblinking at the television. His keys were on the coffee table in front of them, but Jo didn’t seem to notice him when he dipped down in front of her. The blonde woman on the screen sang in dramatic and woeful French and Jo mouthed along, entranced. So when Nacho slipped out of the house and drove towards the desert, it was without witness.

He drove past his father’s shop, Tampico Furniture, and El Michoacano. At a stoplight, he ashed the joint out the window. He drove past some road kill and thought of Lalo’s smile. He set out on I-40 and soon recognized the familiar route for what it was. At each landmark he remembered a perverse act he had committed or a sordid image Lalo had described to him in explicit detail. He followed the skid marks from the last time he had veered off this highway, but this time he didn’t stop. He headed out deep into the scrublands.

Lalo wasn’t the first man Nacho had thought of in this way, (not even the first Salamanca, if he were honest with himself). But Lalo was the first one to brand his name on the inside of Nacho’s skull like this, the first one he couldn’t write off as a fluke. He had felt sick the first time he met Lalo. Cut down one Salamanca, and a new one sprouted in its place. Lalo had smiled and called him smart. Nacho had always hated men like him— the kind covered in honey and flies. Lalo’s charm never wavered and it kept him on edge. But every once in a while, despite himself, Nacho would slip. Lalo would smile at him― a genuine, honest smile. He would call him a badass or praise an idea and just for a second Nacho would forget who he was talking to. 

When Fring had told him to gain Lalo’s trust, Nacho was embarrassed at how quickly he had considered seducing him. It was a ridiculous notion. Nacho had never been with a man before, (save for a few hasty fumblings with Domingo in high school, but those memories were comfortably relegated to the darkest recesses of his mind). How he’d go about seducing a man was beyond him. He wasn’t even sure if Lalo would be susceptible to that. The man’s inexhaustible charm rendered his sexual appetites unknowable. Either he intentionally flirted with everyone he met or he had zero regard for his effect on people. The confusion irritated Nacho to no end. 

Briefly, he considered calling Lalo. Even more briefly, he considered calling a phone sex line and asking if they had any Mexican nationals with accents beaten into submission by American boarding schools. He did neither. Instead, he sat in his car and peered through his windshield, trying to glimpse the stars overhead. 

* * * * *

Lalo tapped on his window and Nacho jolted. Lalo raised his eyebrows and grinned. He opened the car door and helped Nacho out. Nacho opened his mouth to speak but stopped when Lalo took hold of his face. _Oh, pobrecito_ , he cooed. He walked Nacho to the back of the car. Lalo popped the trunk and there was Gus Fring, rope around his feet and ankles and duct tape over his mouth. Next to him was a gas can. Nacho stood to the side as Lalo began to cover his car in gasoline, starting at the engine and working his way to the trunk. He threw a rag over Fring’s face and followed with the gasoline, waterboarding him. The dead night air came alive with his sputtering, animal cries. And then, with a saccharine smile in Nacho’s direction, Lalo tossed a lit match into the trunk.

As Nacho's car burned, he turned to Lalo and said, _How am I gonna get home now?_

* * * * *

Nacho woke with a start. He looked to his right at the passenger seat and then over his shoulder at the back seat. Empty. Outside the windows of the Javelin the night stretched over the desert, quiet and still. His mouth felt dry.

Belatedly, he realized his cell phone was buzzing in the cupholder.

He brought the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Ignacio! I need you to come pick me up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than the rest. The next one is much more substantial. Tomorrow: a dinner party!
> 
> The movie they're watching is Cleo from 5 to 7. I wanted to maintain BCS's longstanding tradition of caring a lot about what the characters are watching. If you're not familiar, this movie deals large with themes of womanhood, but it also deals a little more broadly with existentialism. As the hero waits for test results, she goes about her day fighting an immense sense of foreboding, reflecting on who she is and who she is to other people. I thought using this movie as a touch stone would be a fun way to explore the dread that pervades Nacho's life.


	2. Field Commander Varga

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nacho picks Lalo up from jail, hosts a dinner party, and has some regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place around beginning of "Bad Choice Road." If you don't already know: they cut a scene they actually filmed featuring Nacho, Lalo, Jo, and Amber. From what little of that scene was left, it seems safe to say they were had dinner together. . . I'm really bummed that didn't make it, so here's my take on what could have been.

**Ah, lover come and lie with me, if my lover is who you are,**   
**And be your sweetest self awhile until I ask for more, my child.**   
**Then let the other selves be wrong, yeah, let them manifest and come**   
**Till every taste is on the tongue,**   
**Till love is pierced and love is hung.**

-"Field Commander Cohen" by Leonard Cohen

* * * * *

The severe and institutional architecture of the Northwest Metro Detention Center was made to feel especially monumental by the dead of night, dwarfing the two men speaking in front of it. The radio silence from Lalo had kept Nacho anxious, and now he could see that he had every right to be. Even from the street, sitting in his car, Nacho could tell that Goodman looked like shit. Apparently his seven million dollar field trip hadn’t gone so smoothly. Nacho would have been able to bring the money back without a scratch. Lalo probably knew that, too. Nacho could do it, but would he do it? Or would he run off, seven million dollars richer? How was Lalo supposed to trust him? Nevermind the fact that Nacho had proven his competence to Lalo time and time again. Nevermind the fact that Nacho had been working for Lalo’s family since he was 15. Nevermind the fact that Nacho’s skin was riddled with scars made in the Salamanca name. He watched as Lalo slapped the lawyer on the arm. He felt used. He was good enough for a quick jerk-off over the phone, apparently, but not good enough to do his goddamn job.

As Lalo walked to the car, his face changed. Turning away from the lawyer, his grin was broad and self-satisfied, like he had just made a joke. But as he grew gloser, the smile flattened, until finally he reached the car and the corners of his mustached stretched toward the sidewalk. He glared at Nacho through the open window. “What, you’re not gonna open the door for me?” 

Nacho raised an eyebrow. 

And then Lalo was grinning again. He yanked the car door open and threw himself inside. “I’m just kidding, man!  _ ¿Cómo estás?” _

That was Lalo’s favorite game: drop a man in a minefield and watch him dance. But tonight it felt like Lalo had lost a bit of his edge. He dropped the menace too quickly and now he was looking at Nacho with childish glee, seemingly all but dying to know how he was doing. 

“I’m good.”

Lalo’s grin grew wider. He placed a hand over his heart. “ _ Dios _ , Ignacio, I forgot what a poet you are.”

Nacho didn’t respond. He silently turned on the ignition and headed down the street. Lalo was still chuckling at his own joke as he switched on the radio. He flicked through the stations, FM and then AM, until he finally decided his own singing was better than anything the Albuquerque airwaves had to offer tonight. For once, Nacho was grateful for his crooning, barring them from any awkward conversation as they made their way to Hector’s, where Lalo had been staying. Nacho was happy to stamp their phone call as a mistake and file it away with all his other regrets. But when they pulled up to a red light just four blocks from Hector’s home, Lalo suddenly stopped singing.

“Do you have plans tonight?”

Nacho’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “No.”

“Let’s have dinner.”

Nacho turned to look at Lalo for the first time since he got in the car. He was smiling a familiar smile. Nacho had last seen it the night he risked fifteen years in prison for eighty grams of product. 

“Come on, I’ll cook.”

Nacho swallowed. He was so tired. He was always tired, but tonight it was seeping into his bones, turning them brittle. He wanted nothing more than to go home alone, walk past the girls cuddled together in the living room, and lie down in his black silk sheets so he could close his eyes and never have to open them again. But tonight, Lalo wanted to cook for him. Since Lalo had arrived in Albuquerque, he had been praying for his speedy departure. But now, with only one night left . . . “Okay.”

_ Okay?  _ Nacho considered that he might still be a little stoned. The light turned green. Nacho turned onto Hector’s street. 

“Nah, man, let’s go to your place.” 

Nacho swung his head back to look at him, perhaps a little too quickly. “Really?”

“Yeah, Hector’s kitchen . . . I mean, I love my  _ tío _ , I do, but his kitchen?” Lalo made an odd noise and swept his knuckles under his jaw. “I gave up trying to cook there a long time ago. But your kitchen, my friend, is a thing of beauty. You can tell it’s really been  _ designed _ , you know?”

“I guess.”

Lalo smirked. “ _ I guess _ ,” he imitated. Sometimes, he reminded Nacho of a talk show host, always playing off an invisible crowd.

Without a word, Nacho made a U-turn and headed home. Nacho tried hard not to think about anything other than the cars in front of them. He stopped at a supermarket and waited in the parking lot as Lalo went inside to buy some steaks. He considered calling Amber and Jo to tell them to spend the night at a friend’s, but he worried Lalo might be offended if they weren’t there. Lalo was too quick with his purchase, anyways. Soon he was back in the car and they rode in silence— save for the tapping of Lalo’s fingers on the dashboard— until something dawned on Nacho.

“If you aren’t cooking at Hector’s, are you not cooking for yourself at all?”

Lalo hummed. “No, I cook every night. I do it at the restaurant, though.”

Nacho thought back to collection days. Lalo was always the last one to leave, insisting he would lock up.

“Actually, I was spending most of my time at the restaurant before  _ la policía _ caught up with me. Hector’s place, man . . . It feels haunted. When I’m there, all I can think about is how he’s rotting away in that nursing home. I just can’t take it.”

“I’m sorry.” 

As soon as the words passed his lips, Nacho’s jaw clenched shut. He hadn’t even been thinking— they had just slipped out, operating without his consent. An automatic response to someone sounding sad. Fuck.

But Lalo just laughed. “What do you have to be sorry about?”

Nacho coughed. “In general, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Lalo’s gaze drifted out the window. He rubbed at his moustache thoughtfully. “I like spending time at the restaurant, though. Sometimes, at night, I pretend that I own it, and that I’m staying after hours to work out new dishes for the menu.” He sighed. “In another life, eh?” 

They pulled up to Nacho’s house. He turned off the engine and looked at Lalo. The streetlight cast him in a yellow hue. It softened the angles of his face, and suddenly Nacho could see it— Lalo the chef, dedicating his life to sweating over a stove, whistling along to the radio in a restaurant kitchen, joking around with the other back-of-house staff. Lalo stepped out of the car and Nacho followed. Lalo paused at the hood of the car, politely waiting for Nacho to lead the way. Now, the streetlight didn’t reach his face. Nacho peered through the dark and recognized the man who was recently indicted for a murder he most certainly committed. He led him into his house. 

Jo and Amber were sitting on the floor playing Uno. They sat up straighter when he walked in and smiled when they saw who he had in tow. He told himself he wasn’t jealous. 

Lalo helped the girls to their feet and brushed his knuckles over Amber’s cheek. “ _ ¿Que pasa, mi hermosa? _ ” Amber just smiled at him sweetly. 

He grabbed Jo by the shoulders. “Jo!” he said, making her burst into a fit of giggles. She loved the way he said her name, deep and booming. “I am here to make dinner for you and your man. Would you ladies like to help me?”

Jo beamed and nodded excitedly. Amber's face didn’t change. She just kept smiling her small, delicate smile. Nacho wondered if she’d heard him. 

Lalo turned to Nacho. “Join us?”

“I have to check in with Mingo.”

“ _ Bien _ . Business first.” Lalo led the girls to their own kitchen.

Nacho was hesitant to leave Lalo alone with them, especially with how friendly he was being, but he knew he had to contact Fring’s men as soon as possible. 

The call took longer than it should have. Nacho detailed for Victor Lalo’s agenda for the next day, running through all the people Lalo said he needed to see before he headed home. He gave Victor names and addresses, and when Victor seemed satisfied, he asked, “That’s it, right? He’s done?”

“Just do your job,” Victor replied gruffly and hung up. 

When Nacho walked back inside, Lalo and Jo were pouring the wine through a metal strainer held above the wine glasses. 

“Jo broke the cork off in the bottle,” Lalo explained. “ _ Supongo que no es tan buena en la cocina. _ ” He was smirking. 

_ I guess she’s not so good in the kitchen _ . For what must have been the thousandth time since he’d met Lalo, Nacho resisted the urge to punch the smile off his face. Instead, he opted to help Amber set the table. 

They made casual conversation while they ate. Lalo asked the girls about their day and they told him the plot of an  _ Everybody Loves Raymond _ rerun they watched. Eventually, Lalo turned the conversation to himself. 

“Did Nacho tell you where I’ve been?”

The girls shook their heads. Nacho tried to catch Lalo’s eye, wanting to somehow silently tell him to shut up. He had made a point of never discussing business with Amber and Jo, and he didn’t want to start tonight. Lalo ignored him. 

“I was in jail.”

The girls both looked shocked. “What happened?” Amber asked. 

Lalo shrugged. “Ay, it was just a silly misunderstanding. Nothing I couldn’t have gotten away with in Mexico. Your police get a bit overzealous up here, don’t they?”

“Mmm,” Jo hummed around a mouthful of steak. “I can’t even imagine what prison is like.”

“It is what it is. American prisons are a bit boring. You have to work harder to find decent entertainment.” He glanced in Nacho’s direction, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “But let me tell you, Mexican prisons are a good time. Islas Marías, where I spent my mid-thirties, that place had drama like a telenovela. I used to call it  _ The Winds Over Islas Marías. _ ”

Jo grinned. “What kind of drama?”

Lalo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I had this cell mate. We called him  _ El Alemán  _ because he was one of these South American Nazi-sympathizers; you know the type. His father had escaped to Argentina after the war. The guy shaved his head to fit in with the white power crowd, which, mind you, does not make up a large percentage of the Mexican prison population. Actually, with the shaved head, he looked kind of like your boyfriend here.” He pointed at Nacho with his steak knife. “Not so handsome, though. I don’t think he could have scored two beautiful women like yourselves.”

Jo laughed. Nacho stopped himself from rolling his eyes.

“Anyways, a couple of months after  _ El Alemán  _ moved into my cell, I noticed that my shampoo was running out more quickly than usual. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that maintaining your sense of self is essential to surviving in prison. The prison had shampoo in the commissary, of course, but I had some friends get me the same brand I used on the outside. I still use that brand to this day.” He ducked his head in Jo’s direction. “Feel.”

Jo ran both hands through his hair. “It’s so soft!”

“Nice, right?” He turned to Amber and let her card her fingers through his hair, too. He didn’t offer the same to Nacho. “I went through a lot of trouble to get it, so of course I was angry. To prove someone was stealing it, I switched to the prison shampoo for a few days and marked how much shampoo was left in my bottle. I was right! When I checked, the shampoo was two fingers below my mark. But I could not figure out who it was. The only people who came into our cell were my guys, and my guys all have good heads on their shoulders.” He nodded in Nacho’s direction. “I figured it couldn’t be  _ El Alemán  _ since he shaved his head. So, I told my guys to keep an eye out in showers. Like they weren’t already doing that,  _ los maricones. _ ”

Nacho stiffened slightly at the slur. It slipped right past Amber and Jo.

“Soon enough, they caught the fucker. It was _El Alemán_! He was using it to shampoo his pubic hair!”

Jo cackled. It got Amber, too, and she laughed her gentle laugh alongside them.

“What did you do?” Amber asked.

“Well, I confronted him. He denied it, got nasty, called me names. It was all very hurtful. But he was getting out in a few days, so I thought  _ a salud _ and decided to give him a little going-away present.” 

“What did you give him? Your shampoo?” Jo asked.

“Jo,” he said seriously, looking her deep in the eyes. “Do you know what a Colombian necktie is?”

She shook her head, blinking her wide eyes. “Is it a necktie made in Colombia?”

Lalo laughed and Jo joined in, giggling. Lalo rubbed her shoulder. “That’s exactly what it is.” He winked at Nacho.

Nacho glanced at Amber. She was looking back at him with large, fearful eyes. He quickly looked away.

* * * * *

When they finished eating, no one volunteered to do the dishes. The girls retired to one of the guest rooms to catch the tail end of a  _ Survivor _ marathon. Nacho and Lalo took their not-yet-empty wine glasses to the living room. Nacho took a seat on one of the red leather couches, and immediately regretted giving Lalo the opportunity to choose where he sat in relation to him. There was an entire second couch available, but Lalo sat down next to him and sunk into the cushions with a satisfied sigh. He let his legs fall open, one thigh resting against Nacho’s. 

“Tomorrow’s the day,” Lalo said, sounding wistful. He took a long sip of his wine. “Back to Mexico.”

“Uh-huh,” Nacho agreed, at a loss for anything better to say. 

“You gonna miss me?”

Nacho blinked at him. There was a wild glint in his eyes. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Lalo laughed. He looked smug, like he had just drawn some sort of confession out of Nacho. 

“Man, I am not gonna miss this place.  _ Albuquerque _ .” He said it like the word tasted sour.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Lalo studied Nacho’s face. His grin grew sly and conspiratorial. He cocked his head. “What are you saying, Ignacio?” His voice pitched a half-step lower as he said his name. He placed a heavy hand on his knee, as if it were crucial to identify the object of his question. “You don’t like your own home?”

Nacho stared at the hand. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been here too long.”

Lalo chuckled. “You know what? Albuquerque has its charms.” 

The hand squeezed Nacho’s knee as Lalo took a sip of his wine, eyes not leaving his face.

Nacho swallowed. He shifted his weight and tried to make his mind go blank as he leaned in closer by another inch. He looked from Lalo’s eyes down to his mouth, where a smile danced at the corner of his lips. He met Lalo’s inky stare again. He raised his eyebrows slightly and tilted his head by a centimeter in a silent question, too much of a coward to ask him out loud what he was thinking. He placed a hand on top of the one on his knee.

Lalo set his wine glass on the coffee table.

The heat in Lalo’s eyes seemed to die, leaving them two smoldering hunks of charcoal sunk into his face. His mouth grew flat as fingers dug into the flesh around Nacho's knee. It didn’t feel like a come-on anymore. He was being held down. When he looked from the hand on his knee back to Lalo’s face, he was turned away.

“You’re a good employee, Ignacio. My family is lucky to have you.”

With that, he stood. On his feet, the somber expression vanished and he was back to his usual bright self. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, yeah? 8 AM sharp!” He grinned at Nacho and started heading for the door. 

Nacho scrambled to follow. “You’re leaving? Do you want a ride?”

“No, I’ll call a cab. You’ve done enough for tonight.”

Nacho wanted to scoff. Nothing was ever enough for the Salamancas. Obviously, something about sitting in a car with Nacho for another 15 minutes posed some kind of a problem for Lalo. But he didn’t protest or question Lalo’s bizarre sudden change of heart. Instead, he watched through the big living room windows as Lalo sat on the curb, smoking one cigarette and then second, until a taxi pulled up. As Lalo got in, he didn’t spare a glance back at the house behind him. 

So, Nacho thought. That’s it. 

* * * * *

The next day, standing with Lalo next to a well in the middle of the desert, Nacho tried desperately to parse through the mess of emotions swirling around the pit of his stomach. There was relief for the chapter of his life called “Salamanca” finally drawing to a close, pride for keeping Lalo in the dark about his various betrayals all this time, and something else familiar and a little putrid, spoiling what could have been total elation.

Lalo wore a warm smile and canted his hips in Nacho’s direction as he commended his work, but between them sat about two yards of cracked and empty earth. Nacho regretted that distance. All in all, Lalo had occupied only several weeks in his life. He was like a natural disaster— a brief yet cataclysmic event worth a lifetime of haunted memories. But when Nacho looked back on these last several weeks, he knew everything that didn’t happen would be just as haunting as everything that did happen. Lalo had sped into his life demanding loyalty, fire, and a vivid sexual imagination. He had encroached on every boundary Nacho had, but now he was bidding him farewell from a safe distance. 

Nacho walked back to his car without saying a proper goodbye. Climbing in, he tried to focus on the relief. His father was safe another day and he was one step closer to freedom. He took a few deep breaths, hoping he might be able to exhale the lingering regret from his body. It worked, momentarily. He relished the unusual sensation of weightless until—  _ tap, tap, tap—  _ there was a knock at the window. Nacho stopped the car. Lalo got back in. 

So, Nacho thought. That’s not it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow: Lalo's take on things so far.
> 
> As always, please feel free to correct my Spanish if it looks wrong.


	3. Killing Time (And Disposing of Its Body)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalo reflects on his past and looks to the future, all while making a muck of the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's theme: thrill-seeking! 
> 
> It jumps around a bit, time wise. It goes, roughly: Coushatta --> 50% Off --> JMM --> Bad Choice Road.

Lalo had spent a lifetime making love to meek men. They were easy to come by, even in a world as unforgiving as his. There was Ciro, back home, who was enthusiastic and all too happy to have a job. There was Omar, his father’s third-in-command, who would do anything for any Salamanca. There were countless other nameless men who had dropped their weapons and all but swooned under a well-timed smile. They were easily romanced, but more importantly, they were easily handled. A meek man wasn’t a difficult man to keep secret.

When he arrived in Albuquerque, the first stop he made was to a shabby restaurant where he was told he could find Tuco’s friend. Knowing Tuco, Lalo imagined this friend to be the kind of brute who wore all his menace on the outside, flashing his teeth at the slightest provocation with no regard for the power of subtlety. But instead he found a lost, cow-eyed little thing. He was surprised, but not displeased. This man wasn’t fit to run key Salamanca territories, that much was clear, but maybe he could provide Lalo some companionship while he was in town, keeping his bed warm while he searched for his replacement. Lalo offered him his hand and a wide smile.

“You’re Varga, no?” He took his time rolling the “R” in Varga.

The young man took his hand and shook it slowly. “Uh, no. I’m Domingo. Molina. Domingo Molina.”

“Oh.” Lalo pulled his hand back. He frowned.

“Nacho should be here soon, though.”

Lalo’s smile returned. “Excellent! Well, it was a _pleasure_ to meet you, Domingo! I’ll wait in the kitchen. Send Varga back when he gets here, yeah?” He clapped him on the shoulder and the man winced. Lalo chuckled and winked at him before heading to the back.

When Varga finally arrived, Lalo was pleased to find he wasn't meek or brutish. He was a bit short, but broad and well-muscled. He wore his own brand of intimidation, quiet and severe, like a nice cologne. Maybe he should start giving Tuco more credit— clearly he had found something special with Varga. 

The night after meeting Varga, Lalo recalled another man. It was Andrés, Bolsa’s protege, who had eventually grown tired of his boss’s poor sense of humor and killed his boredom in Lalo’s bed. Like Varga, he was a stoic man who was not as susceptible to Lalo’s charm as most. Lalo had pushed and prodded, but Andrés had come to him with his own terms. (If he were being honest with himself, in the end it was Lalo who had fallen into Andrés’ arms and not the other way around). Lalo enjoyed meek men, yes, but to him they were like cigarettes to a drug addict— just enough to hold him over to his next real fix. 

* * * * *

He let Ignacio simmer on the back burner of his mind.

The night Ignacio had them over for poker, Lalo met his women. They were sweet and docile. Lalo liked them immediately. They reminded him of the housecats his abuelita kept around when he was a kid. Lalo spoke with them amiably, ignoring the men who were crowded around the small dining room table and chatting tensely over beers. After a while, Ignacio came to usher the girls away, telling them it was time for the game to get started. Lalo pouted. “Does Daddy really need to tuck you in?”

Ignacio visibly tensed, but the girls giggled. He kissed them both on the cheek and waved goodbye as Ignacio led them away.

Later, after Ignacio had thrown himself back into the passenger seat of the Monte Carlo, sweaty, panting, and pockets brimming with product, Lalo considered how he might reward his hard work. Lalo was as much a fan of the carrot as he was the stick. Men like little Ocho Loco, they were easy to reward. They took what they were given and never forgot to say “please” and “thank you.” Men like Nachito, on the other hand, were tricky. They were suspicious of anything offered. Sometimes, at least in the beginning, their rewards needed to be disguised.

As Lalo pulled in front of Ignacio’s house, he thought about following him inside. He would probably find the girls passed out on the couch. He would wake one up and lead her to Ignacio’s bedroom. Ignacio, of course, would follow. He would watch as Lalo stripped her clothes off— Amber, the brunette with the great ass, he decided— and ran his hands over her body. Lalo would ask if she wanted to call him _papí_ , which the gringas always loved to do. Ignacio would listen as Lalo whispered perversions into her ear— Jo, the cute one who wore her hair in buns on the top of her head, he redecided. She was small, just like Ignacio, and maybe she would enjoy it if Lalo picked her up and threw her on the bed. Ignacio would sit there as Lalo climbed on top of her and made her tremble and whimper. When Lalo finally buried himself inside her, Ignacio would be overwhelmed with jealousy, but he wouldn’t understand it, not completely. Eventually Lalo would come, and he would smile at Ignacio, and then he would understand everything perfectly.

But Lalo didn’t follow him inside. Instead, he decided to be patient. At the time, he thought he was being prudent, but a few short weeks later he was in an orange jumpsuit and kicking himself. 

  
  


* * * * *

Even going by “Jorge de Guzman,” the Bernalillo County Jail system was an easy world to navigate. Lalo kept to himself and others left him alone, giving him all the space he needed to think out his next move. It was an easy life, but it was dull. The worst part was, Lalo had actually enjoyed prison in the past. Going by “Salamanca” in a Mexican prison, he managed to have some of the most entertaining experiences of his life. But while he was trying to get out on bail, expatriate Sr. de Guzman had to be on his best behavior. Between the time spent scheming, he camped out in the yard, hoping for an altercation he could watch like television. Unfortunately, an uneasy peace was currently being maintained in this jail. A bit wistfully, he wondered how difficult it would be to socially engineer a riot for his own amusement, like he had at Islas Marías Federal Prison. The thought was quickly brushed aside. Now was the time for patience, for focus. But the restlessness was eating away at him. He took up smoking again just to fill the hours in the day. The habit proved to be a good investment— he was able to trade a carton’s worth of cigarettes for a cell phone. 

He spent a few days simply mulling over who to call. He considered calling Mariana, his ex-fiancee. They had kept in touch after he left her, and she was still gentle with him, even when she was telling him to leave her alone. She would be busy with the new baby by now. He thought about ringing Marco and Leonel, but those conversations lacked a certain ebb and flow. The one person he desperately wanted to talk to, he couldn’t. That was Héctor. His uncle always gave the best advice. Lalo would call him from across the globe— from a cocaine processing lab deep inside a Bolivian jungle, or a poppy field outside Kandahar. Héctor would advise on which suppliers could be trusted, or which _carbrones_ needed to be taught a lesson. But if he called now, asked what was to be done about Fring, he would only be answered with silence. For the first time, he was truly flying blind.

Certainly, he could call Ignacio, and mine that situation for whatever it was worth. He wondered what Héctor would think of that. A long time ago, somewhere in the desert between Chihuahua and Juarez, Héctor shot one of his own men for making a joke about how well Lalo rode his horses. Lalo could still remember his surprise at how quickly the blood ran through the sand— he didn’t have time to dodge it before it stained the blue suede at the edges of his favorite loafers. A shorter time ago, a month after Bolsa’s protege went missing, the anxious don visited Héctor at his home in Chihua. They had sat on the back porch, and Lalo had hid behind the garden gate, straining to hear. 

_You know how much I love Eduardo, but Héctor, please, something must be done._

_What are you saying? You think my nephew killed Andrés in cold blood?_

_No, no, of course I don’t. Héctor, please hear me. People talk. And I saw with my own eyes how he would look at Andrés. I think, maybe, he has kidnapped him. Listen, I understand that we all need ways to pass the time, but I come here on my knees. . . Please, Héctor, I need my boy back._

A weighty silence followed Bolsa’s plea. When Héctor spoke, his voice was so low that Lalo could barely hear him. 

_Listen. . . Juan._ Héctor said it with a sneer, as if his name was insult enough. _Next time, make sure you call him a murderer before you call him a faggot._

Watching Héctor’s bodyguard bleed into the sand, and, years later, hearing the biting slur in a conversation not meant for his ears, Lalo felt the immensity of his _tío_ ’s love. As long as he never admitted to anything, that love would shield him from whatever unpleasant realities his enemies might leverage against him. 

He resolved to call Ignacio. For the first week, their conversations were dry. Business, mostly, but when that became hopelessly bland, Lalo would direct the conversation to daily prison life or, after a while, stories of his mother or Efram and Sixto, his childhood friends. But soon, that grew old, too. Lalo wanted to have some fun, but perhaps just as importantly, he wanted to reward Ignacio for his good work. He continued to prove himself as an asset to his family while Lalo was in jail, effortlessly taking the reins of the operation like he had done in the wake of Héctor’s heart attack. The fire at Fring’s was especially commendable. Thinking of Ignacio all alone in that tacky restaurant, recalling Lalo’s firm orders as he drowned out the smell of chicken grease with kerosene before setting it all ablaze, made Lalo’s heart sing. 

Figuring out how to reward him was the tricky part. Simply touching himself while Ignacio listened wasn’t enough. Maybe he could get Ocho Loco to give him the number of one of Ignacio’s _chicas_. He could have her leave her phone in the room, speakerphone on, while she wrapped her lips around him. Lalo pondered what that would be like, listening in while Igancio was vulnerable and oblivious. No, that wasn’t any fun, either. He wanted Ignacio to be fully aware of him. He wanted to be undeniable.

One day in the yard, he spotted an inmate who cut a familiar figure. The man was hunched over a picnic table, playing what appeared to be a game of solitaire with a deck of yellowed, weathered cards. His long neck curved elegantly, drawing a line from his broad shoulders to the bottom of his smooth, buzzed scalp. Lalo approached him, his smile already turned to its full wattage, and the man raised his head. The questioning look he wore was tainted with an incredulous anger at being interrupted. His nose was flat, his eyes were dull, and he was brandishing a poorly rendered Latin Kings tattoo on his neck. With a wave of revulsion, Lalo realized this man resembled Tuco much more than he did Ignacio. He was disappointed, but it gave him an idea.

The next time he called Ignacio, his hand was already on his dick when he told him, “You know, there’s a guy in here that looks like you.”

* * * * *

Later, as he descended the heavy metal staircase of the Goodmans’ apartment building, he could still hear Mrs. Goodman’s voice in his ears. 

_If you can’t trust your men with your money, you have bigger problems than if you trust Saul Goodman._

She was right. He hated to admit it, but the deeply ingrained paranoia narcos held onto so dearly could be as much a hindrance as an advantage. It had protected him from the capricious loyalties of dishonest men, but maybe it also kept him from giving the honest ones a fair chance. Now, he knew, it was time to ante up and finally go all in on an honest and loyal man.

It was Ignacio. Of course it was Ignacio. He had demonstrated his bravery, his fidelity, and his competence countless times. But still, Lalo felt uneasy. The sound of Mrs. Goodman’s voice faded. It was replaced by a cacophony of disjointed noises, the same ones he had heard the night before when Ignacio leaned in close and rested his hand on his. He heard his mother’s scolding, the sound of firecrackers, and a deep male voice wailing, wailing, wailing. They filled his head, growing louder as he peered across the parking lot at the parked red muscle car. His attention was so narrow that he missed the bottom step. He stumbled a little, blue suede loafers scuffing on cement. Squinting at his shoes, he frowned. 

He longed for confidence in his decision, to call Héctor and be assured he was making the right choice. But the only counsel he had left was his gut. If he changed his mind, he figured as he approached the vehicle, he could always take care of Ignacio on the way. 

Lalo got in the car.

“Where to?” Ignacio asked.

  
“ _México_ ,” he replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow: road trip!


	4. Vas a Ver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nacho and Lalo drive to Mexico, and Nacho learns a little history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's theme: Loyalty!
> 
> I use a little more Spanish in this chapter than usual, so I'll be providing translations at the end. I tried not to go too far beyond what I'd be able to understand, but as always please don't hesitate to correct my Spanish!

The first few hours of their trip were grievously silent. Usually, Nacho would pray for Lalo’s relentless chattering to end, both for the sake of his own sanity and so he had less to turn over to Fring, (the less he had to tell Fring, the less involved he was, he figured). But now, the silence was an oppressive hand on the back of his neck, keeping his eyes pointed at the road, lest he be tempted to look at Lalo and try to divine whatever was going on inside his head. Finally— after what felt like a lifetime of pointedly not asking _what am I doing here?_ or _are we never going to talk about our phone call?_ or _when are you going to get it over with and kill me?_ — Lalo cut through tense silence.

“How many people do you trust, Ignacio?”

The question made the hairs on the back of Nacho’s neck stand. 

“A few.”

“Yeah? I don’t just mean the people you love. Love isn’t trust. Your little _chicas_ , as sweet as they are, you shouldn’t trust them any farther than you can throw them. I mean, how many people do you _trust_? How many people do you know who would do anything for you, without question, just because you’re you?”

Nacho paused. He thought of his father, then Domingo, and then Mike.

“I don’t know, maybe one. Or two.” Something about it sounded like a lie in his ears, even though, for once, he hadn’t meant to lie.

“And how many people trust you?”

It felt like the air in the car was growing warmer. 

“How would I know?”

“You think Tuco trusts you?” 

Nacho swallowed. He could feel Lalo’s eyes on the side of his face. “Yeah, of course.”

Lalo went back to staring out the window. After a moment:

“You ever fuck him?”

Nacho nearly swerved off the road as he whipped his head around to look at Lalo. His eyebrows were raised captiously, like Nacho had just answered his question. That had to be some kind of trick question. Was it better to say yes, and show he’s always been loyal to the Salamanca name? Or was it better to say no, of course not Lalo, you’re the only man I’ve ever even thought of?

Nacho’s mouth felt dry.

“Tuco?”

“Yeah, Tuco.”

“No. I never fucked Tuco.” (The truth, just slightly pared down). 

“Would you, if he asked?”

“No,” Nacho said firmly. “I’m not, you know . . .” Nacho wasn’t even quite what he was trying to say. He’d never had to speak on the subject so directly before. 

“Hmm.” Lalo turned back to the landscape racing past his window. He seemed to be studying it intently, like he was searching for something. Nacho felt panicked all of a sudden.

“I mean, I wasn’t always . . . Or at least I didn’t think—”

“No, man, I get it.” 

Did he? Nacho certainly didn’t understand it himself. They passed the next several minutes in silence, Lalo focused on the passing landscape and Nacho trying to make sense of their conversation. Finally, Lalo spoke again. 

“How much do you know about Juan Bolsa?”

“Not much. He’s from Jalisco, right?”

Lalo snapped his fingers. “Jalisco! _¡Exactamente!_ When Eladio found him, he was just 27 years old, but already he was responsible for every heroin sale happening in Guadalajara. So Eladio brought him up to Chihua, and then together— alongside Hector, of course— they started growing the business. They each got to know how the others liked to conduct their affairs, and they soon settled into the arrangement they have today. But Bolsa’s always been uncomfortable with us Salamancas, ‘cause there’s just too many of us!” Lalo laughed. “It’s like Hector’s the general of his own little army, eh?”  
  


Nacho found he could sympathize with Bolsa.

“And Bolsa, he left his family back in Jalisco, so he had to build his own crew from scratch. By the nineties, he had a decent thing going, but it was rough getting there. When he started looking for his number two, he didn't just want a right-hand man, he wanted a protege— really, I think he wanted what Hector and I had. He landed on his housekeeper’s son, a guy named Andrés Morales. Andrés was a smart man, but he came out of nowhere. None of us could ever understand why Bolsa chose him, of all people. Leonel says that Andrés was Bolsa's illegitimate son, but you know what a gossip Leonel is. Andrés was much too handsome to be Bolsa’s kid. I heard he’s sterile, anyway.”

Nacho wanted to laugh. Not even Tuco had talked about other members of the cartel this way. But the direction the conversation was headed in eluded Nacho, so he stayed silent, wary of Lalo’s landmines.

“ _Entonces_ , Bolsa, he went all in on Andrés. In ‘82, right around the time your President Reagan got the military involved in the ‘War on Drugs,’” Lalo made big, comical air quotes with his fingers, “he put Andrés in charge of finding new routes over the border. Which he did! He was very good at it, actually. _Too_ good. All those new routes depended on friendships he’d made along a 1500 kilometer stretch of border. But, then _poof!_ In ‘89, Andrés disappeared. And with him, all those connections disappeared, too. I mean, not disappeared, but none of them wanted to work with Bolsa without Andrés. I don’t blame them— he’s a tasteless, humorless bastard.”

Lalo fell silent again and went back to staring out the window. Surely that couldn’t be the whole story.

“So what happened?”  
  


“What do you mean? To Andrés?” Lalo shrugged. “Nobody knows. Leonel heard that he ran off with his lover. Whatever happened, Bolsa was screwed, man. He basically had no choice but to bring Fring on board, even after the incident with the other _pollo hermano_.” Lalo started giggling.

Nacho didn’t get the joke. What other chicken brother?

“I’m not so sure that Fring’s anymore trustworthy than Andrés was. He is a distribution genius, though, I’ll give him that much.” Lalo paused before turning his whole body to face Nacho. “You know what Hector said to me after Andrés disappeared? He said ‘this would never happen to a Salamanca.’ Because Salamancas, we keep our circles tight. We know exactly who to trust.”

Nacho rolled down his window, hoping the fresh air would keep the growing wave of nausea at bay. He had no interest in following up on that statement, but Lalo’s dark, imploring eyes were digging into the side of Nacho’s skull. He wanted to hear the question. 

“And who do you trust?”

A quick glance to his right, and Nacho saw that Lalo was smiling.

“I trust my uncle, my cousins. I trust my mama, and my sisters, too. I trust my nieces, my nephews, but not my nephew Teo, though! He’s only four years old, but I swear this little devil tried to murder Hector once when Hector took his toy truck away.” Lalo laughed.

Nacho laughed, too, despite himself, a small and breathy chuckle. When he looked back at Lalo, his dark eyes were a little softer than usual. Maybe it was a trick of the light. 

“And I think I trust you, too, Ignacio.”

Nacho waited for the punchline, but none came. He turned his attention back to the road ahead and they settled, once again, into silence.

* * * * *

Eighty miles south of the border, they stopped in a town where the tallest thing around was the steeple of its church. Against the muted backdrop of the quiet main street, the cherry red Javelin felt flashier than it ever had. Lalo directed Nacho to a body shop— a chop shop masquerading as a body shop, really. And not doing it well. A yard sat parallel to the street, bounded by a chain link fence, leaving the men working on the other side in plain view of the whole town. There were six men, diligently taking apart a Mercedes S-Class that couldn’t have had more than 12,000 miles on it. An operation like this would never have the luxury of being so flagrantly criminal on his side of the border. It must be nice. 

Nacho pulled into the garage. Lalo got out and whistled at a tall man with a broad chest and a hair lip. Nacho got out of the car, too, and walked around to the other side to stand at Lalo's shoulder, slightly behind him. The tall man ambled over to them.

“ _Eduardo_.”

Lalo’s face split into a grin, like the man had just made some kind of clever joke. “ _Buenas tardes, Elián._ ”

“ _¿Qué deseas?_ ”

Lalo swept a hand towards Nacho car. “ _Échale un vistazo._ ”

Elián circled around the driver’s side and reached inside the open window. Nacho’s jaw tensed. Elián pulled the hood release and walked back to the front of the car to inspect the engine. He looked up at Nacho.

“ _¿Este es su carro?_ ”

Nacho nodded. 

Elián gave the engine an appraising look. “ _Muy bonita_ ,” he murmured.

“ _Puedes jugar con él, si . . ._ ” Lalo said, his tone teasing. 

Nacho glared at the back of his head. He’d never agreed to let anyone “play” with his car.

“ _¿Si que?_ ” Elián folded his arms over his chest and frowned.

“ _Prestarnos un carro. Y un chofer._ ”

“ _¡Luis!_ ” Elián waved a kid with a mop of curly hair over. “ _Conducirás al Sr. Salamanca y su amigo a casa. Este es un trabajo importante. ¿Claro?_ ”

The kid nodded profusely. “ _Sí, patrón_.”

Lalo grabbed his bag from the trunk of the Javelin and they followed the kid out into the yard, past the men picking at the corpse of the S-Class, to a black SUV. Nacho jogged to catch up to Lalo.

“We’re just leaving my car here?”

“Elián will take good care of it. No offense, but I don’t want whatever debris that thing may have picked up in Albuquerque making it back to my place.”

Nacho thought back to the night Mike had told him that he had more to worry about than the Salamancas. He had inspected Nacho’s van, unscrewed the gas cap like he was expecting to find something other than the putrid stench of gasoline. It was entirely possible that since then, Fring had started tracking his car. Even if he weren’t working for Fring, he would have probably lo-jacked him by now. Lalo was being prudent, but it stung.

“I thought you said you trusted me,” Nacho murmured under his breath.

Lalo chuckled and slapped Nacho’s back. “ _Sí_ , Ignacio, you’re a loyal guy. It’s everyone else in Albuquerque I don’t trust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
>  _¿Qué deseas?_ = What do you want?  
>  _Échale un vistazo._ = Take a look.  
>  _¿Este es su carro?_ = This is your car?  
>  _Puedes jugar con él, si . . ._ = You can play with it, if . . .  
>  _¿Si que?_ = If what?  
>  _Prestarnos un carro. Y un chofer._ = Lend us a car. And a driver.  
>  _Conducirás al Sr. Salamanca y su amigo a casa. Este es un trabajo importante. ¿Claro?_ = Drive Mr. Salamanca and his friend to his house. This is an important job. Got it?
> 
> This is the last chapter for Nacho's POV, but hopefully his voice still comes across loud and clear in the final chapters. Tomorrow: What Amber and Jo are getting up to in their boyfriend's absence! Then back to Mexico!


	5. Interlude with Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Nacho gone to who-knows-where, Amber begins to worry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today’s theme: domesticity!

Two days had passed since Nacho had made his last appearance at the house, and Amber was beginning to worry. His absence wasn’t at all unusual, but he would always send Amber a cursory text when he planned on being out all night. He would never tell her where he was, but he would tell her when he would be home, and Amber was fine with that. But tonight, she sat staring out the window at the driveway with her cell phone clutched in her hand, waiting for that bright red muscle car to roll in. 

New Mexico wasn’t home for her, not really. Amber’s parents had met at the University of Florida, where they both majored in English. Her mother had put her degree to good useㅡ after college, she found a job teaching English at a junior high in Gainesville. Her father became an electrician, but only to support the family while he wrote his novel. In the early years, no one believed in her father’s dreams more than her mother. He was going to write the next great American novel, she was sure of it. He would be respected, and he would take care of them. That’s what her mother told her when she was very young, on the nights when the hours after dinner were spent quibbling over bills. But as she got older, the quibbling turned to yelling, and Amber’s mother changed her tuned. Now, her father was a loser. He could never take care of his family like a real man. His novel was shit and no one would ever pay to hear what he had to say. (“Why don’t you write the novel, Mom?” Amber never asked).

Her parents divorced when she was 14. After the divorce, her dad moved to Albuquerque, where they sold the turquoise belt buckles he always liked to wear. She would fly from Florida every summer to see him, and they would pack a whole year's worth of father-daughter bonding into 3 months. They would bring their copies of _Birds of the Southwest_ to the Sandia Mountains, they would take guided tours of Old Town, they would sit and watch the sky for hours at the Hot Air Balloon Festival. Her father died when she was 19, electrocuted by some faulty wiring on the job, but every summer she kept coming back to Albuquerque. 

One summer, she forgot to leave. She found a cheap apartment and started waitressing at a strip club called 4’s Cabaret. There, she met a man named Randall. Randall was sweet, but also a little sleazy and a little bullish. He talked to her every night he came in, about twice a week, and grew friendlier with each of their chats. 

“Why don’t you dance up there with the other girls?” he asked her one night.

The truth was, she wanted to. The other girls all looked so beautiful when they danced. Her friend Nikki transformed when she stepped on stage. A captivating confidence would overtake her and she would command the entire room, practically drowning in paper bills by the time the song ended. But Amber could never do it. She worried she would take the stage and realize she had nothing to give the hungry crowd, at least not anything they would pay for. 

That night, she blew Randall in exchange for a gram of coke.

Over the next few months, Amber noticed Randall was wearing more and more jewelry, gaudy gold pieces encrusted with expensive-looking jewels. When she asked him about it, he told her he got a promotion at work.

“I’m moving up in the world,” he said. “I’m a new man now. Call me Blingy.” 

A few weeks later, “Blingy” invited her to a party. He told her to bring a friend because his boss had a stick up his ass and needed to unwind. Randall’s boss was nothing like she expected. His face was composed of harsh, acute features, but his voice was low and gentle in a way that made Amber feel protected. That night, both she and Nikki went home with Randall’s boss. It turned out that Nacho Varga needed a little bit more unwinding than most. And just like she forgot to leave Albuquerque, she forgot to leave his home.

Most days, she felt like a winner. She felt like a winner whenever she had nothing to do but spend eight hours straight parked on the couch, watching QVC. She felt like a winner whenever Nacho tossed her a bag of meth, free of charge. She felt like a winner whenever he would roll over in the night, grab her by her hips, pull her body against his, kiss her neck and slip his hand between her thighs while Jo kissed her lips and palmed her breasts. Simply speaking, she had all her needs met and then some. 

But tonight, as she sat staring at the empty driveway, Amber didn’t feel like a winner. The enormity of Nacho’s presence in her life was coming down on her all at once. If he never came home, she wouldn’t just be losing a boyfriend, she’d be losing everything. This wasn’t her house, it was his, (even though she spent every waking hour here and he treated it like a motel with hourly rates). It was his art on the walls, his food in the pantry, and his gun in the dresser hidden beneath her panties. It was his car she was waiting to see pull into the driveway, the only car between the three of them. How were she and Jo supposed to get groceries? She was nearly thirty, and she was scared for her life because the man who paid the mortgage, the gas bill, and the water bill had vanished. Tonight, Amber felt like a loser. She wondered if this was how her dad felt when he stood passively in the kitchen doorway while her mother talked about him like he wasn’t even there. 

Amber thought back to the last time she saw Randall. It had been the first time she’d seen him in months. It was the night Nacho had a few of his colleaguesㅡ “friends” never felt like the right word for any of the people Nacho knewㅡ over for a game of poker. It was the night they met Nacho’s new boss. Lalo had been charming, open, and warm, talking excitedly with her and Jo as so few of Nacho’s guests ever did. Usually they were only afforded uncomfortable waves or lewd stares. After Nacho shooed them away, Amber and Jo camped out in one of the guest rooms, unofficially Jo’s room, and lay together on the bed watching TV. Nacho burst into the room a couple of hours later without knocking, barely masked concern written on his face.

“Lalo and I have to go take care of some business. Carlos, Javier, and Blingy are still here. Can you show them out?”

Jo, unbothered, stayed in bed to watch Bob Saget present the next of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Nacho and Lalo were already out the door by the time Amber made it to the kitchen. Carlos, Javier, and Randall were in the dining room, tossing empty beer bottles into plastic bags. 

“What’s the point of having not one, but _two_ chicks around,” Carlos was whining, “if neither of them ever cleans? My lady keeps the house spotless, and still let’s me fuck her six ways from Sunday when I get home.”

“A bang maid,” Javier chimed in.

Randall laughed. “Jesus, Carlito, you’re such a fucking pussy. That’s not a girlfriend, that’s a mom. She breastfeed you, too?”

“Damn straight she does!” Carlos crowed.

Amber stepped into the room and Carlos stiffened. He excused himself to the living roomㅡ “I think I saw Blingy stuff the butt of his cigar between your couch cushions,” ㅡ and Javier followed. Amber folded her arms and tried to put on her best serious face.

“Is everything alright?” she asked sternly.

Randall pulled her in by her hips. “Yeah, baby, everything’s good in the hood!” 

“I mean with Nacho and Lalo.”

Randall shrugged. “Domingo got himself into some shit. But your boy’s got it covered.” 

He leaned down to kiss her, but she stopped him with a firm hand on the side of his face. 

“Come on, Amber, he doesn’t have to know! What, you don’t do it without Jo anymore? That’s fine. There’s more than plenty of me to go around!”

Amber ignored him. Her hand drifted from his cheek to his ear. His earlobe had been torn in half, leaving two short ropes of skin dangling from his head. 

“What happened here?”

Randall sheepishly tugged at his earlobe, (earlobes now, really). “The boss was having a bad day, I guess.”

The boss. Lalo. Even thinking back on it now, Amber wanted to vomit. She knew when she met Nacho that he was in the drug game. And she wasn’t stupidㅡ it was such a nice house. Obviously, he was more than just a dealer. His job must be a dangerous one, but she never gave it much thought because the danger always stopped at the front door. Their house was a sanctuary. (Jo told her about a group of men who had torn Nacho out of their bed one night and frog-marched him out of the house at gunpoint, but she suspected it was just a dream. Amber had fallen asleep on the couch that same night after crashing from her high. If all that had really happened, surely she would have woken up, too). But the image of poor, sweet Randall standing in her dining room with an ear mutilated by his violent boss shattered her illusion of security. The danger of Nacho’s world was very real, and now she had a name for it: Lalo Salamanca. The same man Nacho told her he was on his way to meet the last time she saw him. 

At least she wasn’t alone. Jo was in the kitchen, whipping up her specialty: grilled mac and cheeses. It wasn’t long before Jo joined her on the couch and proudly presented her with a steaming sandwich. Amber gave her a small smile and ate it in sullen silence.

Jo brushed her hair behind her ear. “What’s wrong, you don’t like it? I used shells instead of macaroni. That’s your favorite shape, right?”

“Nacho still isn’t answering his phone.”

“Oh, babe,” Jo cooed. “He’s fine. If anyone can take care of himself, it’s our little Nacho.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “Besides, he’s with Lalo, right?”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

Jo giggled. “Why? He’s such a nice guy!”

“He’s dangerous, Jo. Did you see Blingy’s ear the other night? He told me Lalo ripped his earring out. Now he’s got, like, two little rat tails hanging from his ear. It’s gross.”

Jo scoffed and waved her hand dismissively. “Please, Blingy’s full of shit. He probably got that big, dumb earring caught in a door chair. Even if Lalo did do it, I’m sure Blingy did something stupid to deserve it.”

Amber was growing exasperated. “What about that story he told us?” she pressed. “The one about his cellmate? A Colombian necktie is not a necktie made in Colombia, Jo. It’s when they cut your throat and pull your tongue out through the gash!”

“Jeez, Amber, calm down! I’m sure it was just a joke.”

Amber waved her arms wildly at the cavernous living room. “Look around! Nacho’s a drug trafficker! Lalo’s his boss. He’s _cartel_. Do you really think he isn’t capable of that?”

Jo rolled her eyes. “What do you care? He told us the guy was a Nazi. Aren’t you Jewish?”

Amber wanted to argue, to scream _that’s not the point!_ , but instead she resigned herself to laying her head down on Jo’s shoulder. Jo wouldn’t get it. She’d grown up too well. Her dad was a corporate attorney and her mom was a cardiologist; life had always come easy for her, and these days it came easier than ever. It allowed her a natural, breezy confidence and carefree attitude that Amber wasn’t able to achieve until she started doing drugs. Usually, Amber loved her for it, but tonight she was frustrated with how easily she adopted her blindness. She wrapped an arm around Jo’s stomach and snuggled closer, trying hard to forget her anxiety. They ate their sandwiches in silence, until Jo suddenly jumped to her feet.

“Wait here!”

Amber blinked in confusion as Jo scampered off to the master bedroom. When she emerged a few minutes later, she was dressed in one of Nacho’s more loudly-patterned shirts, which hung loosely off her slender frame. She had taken the buns out of her hair and pulled it into a tight ponytail. Using an eyeliner pencil, she had drawn a thick, black mustache over her lip. She spread her arms wide, like Jesus on the cross.

“ _Buenos dias_ , Amber.” Her voice was pitched low. “It is I, Lalo Salamanca!”

Amber tried to glare at her, but it was undermined by the sputtering laugh that escaped her.

Jo put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “I heard that you are worried I’m going to hurt your dear Nacho. _Dios mio_ , no, no no! I could never!” Jo brought her hand to the edge of her mouth and spoke in a deep, conspiratorial whisper. “Have you seen the way I look at him? Clearly, I’ve got something else in mind.”

Amber huffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jo.”

“Amber! Baby!” Jo’s baritone didn’t falter as she dropped to her knees and flung her hands wide. “Do I _not_ look like an eighties porn star trying to get railed by the closest hunk available?”

Amber laughed and pulled Jo in by her face for a kiss. When she pulled away, she noticed the mustache was a bit smugged.

Jo poked her shoulder. “Now you do Nacho.”

Amber tried to drop her voice like Jo did, but it wasn’t nearly as ridiculous. “Okay. Where the hell are we, Lalo? Why haven’t I been home in two whole days?”

“Well,” Jo swept her arm behind her at the cluttered coffee table. “As you can see from this beautiful beach-side resort, we are obviously on a fuckation.”

“A what?”

“A fuck vacation.”

“Oh. Okay. So, while we’re at this resort . . .” Amber paused, and spoke again in her normal voice. “Can it be a ski lodge? I’ve always wanted to go skiing.”

“No, you have to yes-and my premise. It’s like the first rule of improv.”

“Fine.” Amber tilted her head forward and dropped her eyebrows, trying to recreate Nacho’s intense gaze. She began again in a deep voice. “So, Lalo, you brought me all the way to this resort just so you could finally get a piece of this ass?” 

“I had to get you alone, Nacho! Those girls you have at home, they’re just too beautiful . . .” Jo leaned forward to peck Amber on the lips. “Too sexy. . . “ Another kiss. “Too breath-taking. . .” One more kiss, this one held a moment longer. “I couldn’t have you getting distracted.”

Amber giggled against Jo’s lips. “And now that you have me alone, what is it that you want, _Señor Salamanca_?” She whispered his name low, seductively.

Jo’s face broke into a wicked grin. Amber squealed as Jo flung herself into her lap and smothered her with her soft mouth.

“Take me, Ignacio!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The names Nikki, Carlos, and Javier are what those characters are called on IMDb, even though they’re never named on the show.
> 
> Tomorrow: Mexico!


	6. “Lalo” and Other Four Letter Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalo gets fucked in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today’s theme: betrayal!
> 
> This is where things start to get a little crazy… Alternate title that was just too silly: Tío Lessons (like Beyoncé’s Daddy Lessons).
> 
> Flashback takes place in ‘89.

Ignacio did good with Don Eladio. Lalo couldn’t help but feel proud, not just of Ignacio, but of himself for betting on the right horse. It was a risky game, (Bolsa had bet everything he had on Andrés, and look what happened there). That night, when Ignacio went inside the house in search of some hard liquor, Lalo followed and told him he kept the _really_ good stuff in his bedroom.

When they reached his bedroom, Lalo finally kissed him. Ignacio seemed to sigh in relief and Lalo chuckled at how romantic it was. Then Ignacio bit him and Lalo winced. He shoved him onto the bed and roughly pulled down his jeans. Ignacio took his shirt off himself and then proceeded to rip open Lalo’s. Buttons flew.

“Nachito—” he began with a warning tone, but Ignacio cut him off with a rough kiss and a hand twisted in his hair. Lalo hid his wince behind a wolfish grin. If that’s how he wanted it, that’s how he was going to get it. 

Lalo descended on Ignacio’s neck with his teeth bared. Ignacio’s halting breaths filled his ears as he mouthed over the corner of his jaw, and then his Adam’s apple, and then his clavicle. He gasped faintly as Lalo’s hand moved to his cock, half-hard, and began to stroke. Lalo looked back up at him and smiled, recalling the way Ignacio had gasped over the phone. Suddenly, Ignacio’s mouth was crashing into his own and he tasted blood. He tried to break away, but the hand Ignacio still had tangled in his hair held him in place. Lalo grunted and squeezed the base of his cock, harder than was necessary. Ignacio released his hair with a pained grunt of his own. 

Lalo rolled to the edge of the bed. He pulled open the drawer of his nightstand and felt around blindly until he found a condom and a bottle of lube. He dropped the condom on the comforter and flicked open the lube. Nacho watched, propped up on his elbows, as he smeared a few drops across his fingers.

“Knees up,” he ordered.

Nacho listened, pulling his heels in and setting his feet flat on the bed. Lalo placed one hand on his knee. With the other, he ghosted his fingertips over his rim. He listened closely to Ignacio’s breathing, and when he decided he was ready, he pushed in. Nacho took to it quickly, sighing appreciatively as Lalo teased him open. He took the second finger even more easily than the first, all the while watching Lalo like a hawk. Lalo met his unyielding stare with a playful, devilish grin before taking hold of his cock. Nacho broke Lalo’s gaze. He let his head fall to his shoulder and closed his eyes, breathing in time with Lalo’s stroking. Lalo took the opportunity to mouth at his balls. Nacho eyes flew open and groaned softly, almost imperceptibly. Lalo batted his eyes at him as he licked up his length. Nacho carded his fingers through his hair and Lalo took him in his mouth.

Feeling the full weight of Ignacio on his tongue, he sighed. Nacho clenched around his fingers and moaned so sweetly that Lalo could have wept. In that moment, a realization hit him like an anvil from the sky. He didn’t just want to reward Ignacio, he wanted to thank him. Lalo dragged his lips over his leaking head. He saw everything he had done for his family. He saw how he had risked his own flesh and freedom. And all with a beautiful, quiet dignity. Lalo pushed his fingers in a little deeper. He understood what an asset this man was, what an asset he could be. He had done so well with Eladio. Lalo licked up Ignacio’s length, took him back into his mouth, and pressed down. According to Tuco, he had been with their family for nearly twenty years. Lalo swallowed around him. Could he stick around for twenty more? Lalo wasn’t one to think much about the future, but he couldn’t help but imagine himself, face even more wrinkled and hair even more gray, with Nacho at his side, as strong and golden as ever. They could do so much together. Practically a Salamanca. Lalo’s mustache pressed into the hair at the base of Ignacio’s dick. “Ignacio Salamanca” had a nice ring to it. Lalo curled his fingers. Ignacio’s hips jerked violently and Lalo gagged.

Lalo pulled off and peered at the face below him. Ignacio’s eyes were screwed shut and he was breathing hard. Lalo kissed him. He melted under him until Lalo scissored his fingers. He gasped against Lalo’s lips and Lalo laughed. Annoyance flashed across Ignacio’s face, but it quickly vanished. He pulled Lalo into another kiss, a soft and forgiving gesture. Lalo pulled his fingers out and grasped his own dick. He pressed a kiss into the corner of Ignacio’s jaw.

“ _¿Listo?_ ”

Nacho paused. He shook his head.

“ _¿No? ¿Por qué?_ ”

Nacho pushed at his shoulder, hard, making him fall onto his back. Nacho rolled over, propped himself on his elbow, and cupped the side of his face.

“I want to fuck you.”

Lalo scoffed incredulously. “ _¿En serio? Después yo_ —”

Nacho shut him up by gently pressing his lips to his. “ _¿Por favor?_ ”

Lalo stared up into Ignacio’s eyes, so warm in the soft yellow light. It had been a while, but Nacho didn’t need to know that. Lalo heaved a sighed and made a big show of rolling his eyes. “ _Bien._ ”

Nacho smiled— a rare sight— and Lalo was suddenly delighted he agreed. Nacho worked him open with steady, methodical fingers, nowhere as slow or teasing as Lalo had been. But still, Lalo found himself growing overwhelmed. Nacho was staring at him from in between his thighs, through his exceptionally long lashes. It was the same heavy, calculating gaze that made him the perfect enforcer to stand behind whichever Salamanca he was working for at the time. Being on the other side of it, Lalo’s face flushed, like he wasn’t the hardened, fortysomething career criminal he prided himself on being. He grew irritated.

“ _¡Dale, Ignacio!_ ”

Nacho extracted his fingers, keeping his eyes trained on Lalo's face. With one hand he palmed at his own dick, and with the other he found the condom left on the comforter and held it up.

“Do I need this?”

Lalo squinted his eyes, glaring. “I don’t know, do you?”

Nacho tossed the condom back on the bed. He smeared a bit of lube over his cock, stroking himself languidly, all the while gazing intently back at Lalo. Lalo felt like he was being challenged to a staring contest. 

Finally, Nacho lined himself up. The head of his cock pressed against Lalo’s entrance. “ _¿Listo?_ ” he echoed.

“ _Si, si,_ just come on already, man, I’m— _¡Mierda!_ ”

Ignacio pushed in. He was bigger than Lalo thought, or maybe it had just been too long since he’d done this, but either way Lalo couldn’t help the pained whimper that escaped him.

Nacho paused, halfway inside him. “Are you okay?” His brow was furrowed in what looked to be genuine concern.

Lalo laughed around gritted teeth. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

Nacho buried himself, slowly, inside of Lalo. Every inch felt like it might be the one to break him. When he was all the way in, Lalo let out a deep exhale. He clenched experimentally around Nacho, whose breath hitched. Lalo grinned. He rubbed a hand over Nacho’s scalp, down the back of his neck, over his back, until it finally rested on a firm buttock. He squeezed briefly, and then slapped Nacho’s ass as hard as he could from such an awkward angle. 

“ _¡Vamos!_ ”

Nacho fucked him earnestly and rhythmically, with the same intense focus he brought to his work. Soon the pain abadated, leaving room for pleasure to stake its claim over Lalo’s body. He kept one hand on Ignacio’s hips, guiding their tireless pulse forward. With the other hand, he grabbed at the headboard behind him. Nacho placed his own hand over Lalo’s and Lalo smiled up at him. He threw his head back and moaned, a bit theatrically. Nacho picked up his pace. His mouth was hanging open and he was breathing heavily. He was staring down at him with a frightening severity, like he was trying his hardest to memorize the lines of Lalo’s face. 

Belatedly, Lalo wondered whether Miguel and Ciro could hear him as they made their rounds through the house. He was always loud in bed, but Nacho was pulling sounds out of him that were shocking and profane, even to his ears. The thought was cut short as Nacho wrapped an arm around Lalo’s lower back and lifted him, pulling his hips into his own, so that only his shoulders remained on the bed. Nacho fucked him harder and Lalo moaned louder, and louder, until his moans became a string of garbled, mewling affirmations in Spanish. ( _Así. Dámelo. Si, si, si)._ He reached for his cock and stroked himself frantically, trying to keep up with the maddening pace Nacho had set. ( _Ignacio, por favor)._ His hand gripping the headboard slipped out from under Nacho’s and found its way to the back of his neck. He pulled Nacho’s face down until they were mere inches apart. That’s how he came, squeezing around Ignacio and grunting his name against his lips. His release painted his own stomach. Nacho’s thrusts didn’t stall. Lalo gently squeezed his sensitive cock as Nacho continued to fuck him, until his hips stuttered and his forehead crashed into Lalo’s. 

Ignacio’s forehead remained pressed against his as their breath mingled in the square inch of space left between. The warm, full sensation of a man coming inside him wasn’t new to Lalo, but it had been long enough that it felt oddly foreign. When Lalo had first met Ignacio inside that dingy little restaurant, he had known he was special, (for a footsoldier, at least). He knew he could rely on him to do good work, and then maybe, at the end of the day, to be a good fuck. But he hadn’t imagined their first encounter to be like this. It really had been ages since Lalo had let another man fuck him like that, let alone an inferior. (Not since Héctor’s body guard had joked, “If that’s how you ride your ponies, I’d like to see how you ride a dick!”). Why Ignacio? Mrs. Goodman was right, he had to learn to trust _someone_. He chose Ignacio, and clearly he had chosen well. He was everything Lalo imagined him to be back when he had seen him as nothing more than a good employee and good entertainment. But now that Lalo had let him into his home and into his bed, he proved to be even more. It should have comforted him, but the bombastic sound of fireworks still filled his head at the thought of having to choose anyone. So he pushed the thought aside and let his mind wander elsewhere. 

Lalo felt his face go slack. His chest was still heaving, but so was Nacho’s, so he felt a little bit less like an old man. His mind drifted as he studied the man above him in silence. Nacho studied him, too. Nacho brought a hand to his face and cupped his cheek. His thumb brushed against the end of his mustache. Briefly, Lalo thought he could smell a woman’s perfume.

“What are you thinking about?” Nacho asked.

With a start, Lalo realized his mind had drifted to the time he learned that Héctor killed his wife, Tía Marta. His mother’s voice rang in his ears, telling him to mind his own business. Quickly, he buried the thought. 

“I’m thinking about you, of course. What else?”

Nacho snorted. He rolled off of Lalo and flopped down next to him unceremoniously. Lalo moved to the side of the bed and stood, only to be met with the peculiar feeling of Ignacio’s cum dripping down the inside of his thigh. He walked to the en suite and turned on the tap, letting the water run warm before soaking a washcloth and wiping down his stomach and the mess between his legs. Looking in the mirror, he eyed the 16k gold relief of _La Virgen de Guadalupe_ around his neck. Marta and Héctor had given it to him for his fifteenth birthday, but knowing Héctor, Marta had probably picked it out. He tossed the washcloth in the hamper and walked back to bed, laying his sore body down next to Nacho’s.

A wave of exhaustion suddenly swept over Lalo like he hadn’t felt in years. The body next to him was warm, the bed beneath him was soft. He glanced at the clock on his bedside table. It was almost three am. Maybe he could sleep until sunrise, for once. 

Lalo dropped his arm over Nacho’s shoulders. His hand rested over a puckered, pink scar above his clavicle. He pressed a kiss into his scalp. “Let’s get some sleep, _amorcito_.”

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


_When Lalo was a young man, he learned what_ la familia es todo _meant. He had been in the family business_ ― _selling olive oil, they liked to joke_ ― _for quite some time, but he still hadn’t cut his teeth. He had spent too much time away from home. He thought he was done with school at 18, but Héctor had sent him back to America and wouldn’t let him return until he had a college degree in hand. The friends he made— loud Americans who called him “Eddie” and were always ready to offer him a beer— did nothing to cure his homesickness. He enjoyed some of his classes_ ; _his electives taught him about philosophy and psychology and Eastern religions. But he was majoring in business, just like his tío wanted, and the cold, easy rationality of the numbers bored him. Ultimately, Lalo understood that his degree meant to Héctor what the flashy cars and ranch-style estate meant to Don Eladio. It made Lalo feel proud and used in equal measure._

_When Héctor finally gave Lalo his own crew, he was eager to be useful, eager to show his uncle that he was more than an accessory to family wealth. So when his men started showing up high more and more frequently, he put his ear to the ground._ Methamphetamine _, his men told him. The cartel had never been involved with cheap street drugs like meth. It was the poor man’s coke, and in the eighties, coke was king. But business school had taught him to pay attention to demand. When he took his fiancee Mariana to the nightclubs, however, he couldn’t find a single lost soul snorting the chalky powder he knew as meth. Instead, he found kids hunched in corners smoking from glass pipes filled with little cloudy crystals._ Methamphetamine _, the kids told him._

_Lalo told his men to bring him the new neighborhood meth dealers._ Not dealers, _they said._ Business men, handing out free samples. _Lalo was surprised to find that yes, they really were businessmen. Two Chileans, owners of a small chain of restaurants. When they came to meet with him, they dressed nicely. The darker, more severe one_ ― _he wore a suit. The handsome one with the big eyes_ ― _he was more casual, but still sharp. Lalo tried hard not to show how impressed he was. The handsome one wasn’t only the chemist behind this new product_ ― crystal meth _, they called it_ ― _he was also the chef behind the delicious chicken at their restaurants. Lalo appreciated a man who could cook._

_They talked to him about business._ It’s more addictive than cocaine. You can source it locally. No more tax paid to the Colombians just for the privilege of being their middlemen. _That’s exactly what he told Eladio, Héctor, and Bolsa, (the triumvirat, Héctor sometimes called them). He knew he was only permitted this audience on account of his last name, but he would be damned if he wasted it. He would bring the Chileans to these men on a silver platter, garnished with cloudy little crystals, and they would tell him he was a fine businessman and an asset to the cartel. Lalo waited for pride to register on his uncle’s face, but it never came. Héctor merely shrugged when Eladio ordered Lalo to bring the Chileans to him._

_Lalo watched the meeting from inside the house. He watched the Chileans sit ramrod straight while Héctor pissed in Eladio’s pool. He watched them grow even tenser when Eladio finally joined them on the patio. He watched them talk, becoming more aggravated by the second. He watched Héctor pull a gun from his hip. He heard a sound like a firecracker before something red bloomed across the handsome one’s skull. He watched the blood begin streaming down the side of his face, his neck, and his shoulders, before he slumped onto the concrete. He watched Bolsa grab the dark one by the shoulders as he lunged at Héctor. He watched the handsome one’s blood spill into the pool. He listened to the dark one wail and wail and wail, lying next to his partner’s body even after Héctor’s foot had left his neck._

_A lesson, Salamanca style. Héctor held no shame for any of his actions. He was right with God, or at least with a God of his own making. The kind that anoints saints to watch over drug dealers and smugglers. But still, the heavy gold around their necks reminded them they were Roman Catholics. They had moores, in theory. Many things, like the death of Lalo’s tía, necessarily went left unsaid. Good Catholics didn’t kill their wives_ ― _everyone knew that. Other things, like his father’s prison escape, were heavily mythologized and proliferated. Only the most romanticized truths found their way into the family mythology, the kind that made them sound like Hellenic heroes, complete with all the glamorous carnage of the Trojan war. Lalo heard time and time again about how his father tunneled his way out of prison, taking out three guards and a rat along the way, and went on the lam. Good narcos made their escapes and spent the rest of their lives two steps ahead of the federales_ ― _everyone knew that. They didn’t get gunned down in cramped and dusty tunnels, not having seen their children in years. That wouldn’t make for a good story, so Lalo didn’t think about it. Instead, he would sit at his tío’s side and let himself get swept away in his sanitized reality. The folklore never contained the lesson itself, but rather served as a template for the lesson_ ― _an inspiration for self-actualization. Real lessons in the Salamanca family were hard-won. A real lesson was a switch on the back, a brother’s head held underwater, a bullet in the head of an “associate.”_

_“One of them is better than two,” Héctor said when he walked back into the house. The remaining Chilean stayed wailing by the pool._

La familia es todos. _A strength, but also a liability_ — _without his family, a man is nothing. That night Lalo broke things off with Mariana and killed Andrés. (Bolsa never knew, of course. Eventually he abandoned his theory of the nefarious, predatory fag stealing away his star lieautenant and accepted Andrés was probably dead at the hands of any one of their innumerable enemies. But over the years, he never stopped eveying Lalo suspiciously when he thought he couldn’t see). The Salamancas, Lalo now understood, were enough family for him._

_Just a few months later, a firecracker was thrown onto the pitch of a FIFA World Cup qualifying game. Lalo watched the match at his abuelita’s house, surrounded by his cousins, his aunts and his uncles, his sisters, his nieces and nephews. He watched from the couch, bouncing his sister’s youngest daughter on his knee as a sound like a gun rang out and legendary Chilean goalkeeper Roberto “Cóndor” Rojas fell to the ground. It appeared as though the firecracker had hit him. The footballer writhed in pain and pawed at his forehead and the crowd was whipped into a frenzy. The next day,_ La Prensa _printed a photograph on the front page of Rojas being carried off the field by his teammates, blood streaming down the side of his face, his neck, and his shoulders. Héctor clipped the photograph from the newspaper, folded it into an envelope, and mailed that envelope to Los Pollos Hermanos._ _It was later discovered that Rojas had hidden a razor blade in his glove and cut himself on his forehead, like professional wrestlers do. Chile was subsequently barred from both the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, and The Condor was banned for life._

_Lalo met Gustavo Fring again 15 years later, in Albuquerque. Fring didn’t let on whether he recognized him or not. Lalo wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t. Even without the mustache and the graying hair, he was a different man. He had long since given up pleasing anyone other than himself, and he was happier for it. Whether Fring recognized him was immaterial. Lalo certainly recognized Fring. Nothing had changed. This was the exact same man he had watched weep into Don Eladio’s pool. Lalo had remained in the house watching Fring cradle his dead, handsome lover for at least half an hour after the others left. He’d studied the valleys cutting into his cheeks and the grief calcifying in his eyes. Over a decade later, in a grease-stenched restaurant north of the border, and Fring was still a man with nothing. It made Lalo want to laugh. Tío really was a great teacher; it was Fring’s own fault for not learning his lesson._

* * * * *

When Lalo awoke to the sound of gunfire, his bed was empty. 

Later, when Lalo was limping past Yolanda’s body, he heard fireworks and pictured Ignacio’s blood spilling into glassy blue water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The World Cup scandal was a very real thing that actually happened the same year Gus and Max met the Juárez Cartel. If you go to the “fic inspo” tag on my blog @alpineshepardbadboy, you can find the picture I imagined Hector sending to Gus.
> 
> The “selling olive oil” thing is a Godfather reference. It’s my favorite movie, but Tony Dalton also talks about it _a lot_ (that and the Sopranos… I think we could be friends) so I’ve inadvertently come to associate it with Lalo.
> 
> Tomorrow: the finale!


	7. You're Not Rid of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalo forgets the lessons of his uncle and remembers the lessons of another teacher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: The Spirituality of Eduardo Salamanca. Today's theme: scars!
> 
> If you've enjoyed this fic, please show your appreciation to Moritz (@krokorobin) and Lauren (@laurensshitpost). They organized Lacho Week and gave me the inspiration to write again, so a big thank you to them! <3
> 
> Okay. So here's the deal: I took a biiig swing with this chapter. It's why I tagged this work "OOC." I was excited to try this resolution on for size, even if it's not a place the show would ever go, but now that I'm done with it I'm not sure it works at all . . . Please let me know what you think, 'cause I'm a little worried about it lol

**I'll tie your legs**

**Keep you against my chest**

**Oh you're not rid of me**

**Yeah you're not rid of me**

**I'll make you lick my injuries**

**I'm gonna twist your head off, see**

**—** “Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey

* * * * *

“ _Hola_ , Ocho Loco! How’s it going, man?” Lalo was finding it harder than usual to lace his voice with it’s typical cheer as he cradled his cell phone between his shoulder and his ear and used both hands to wrench the steering wheel to the right as he nearly missed his exit. 

“Oh, hey, Don, uh, Don Lalo. What’s up?”

“Have you heard from Nacho? I’ve been trying to get a hold of him.”

“No, last I heard he was with you.”

“Hmm. No, last I saw him, he was headed home.” From where, that didn’t matter. “Well, you see, there was this project I was hoping he could help me with. . . Oh, hey, maybe _you_ can help me with it!”

“Me?”

“Yes, Ocho Loco, you. Who else? Listen, meet me at my place at—,” Lalo glanced at his watch, “nine P.M.” He rattled off the address of Héctor’s house. “Oh, and park a couple streets south, okay?” Lalo flipped the phone shut without waiting for a reply. 

As Lalo merged onto the freeway, he turned his eyes to the arid landscape hugging the asphalt. Rocky, yellowed scrub made way for golden mesas colored by the rising sun. In the hours since he had sped out of his razed estate in the black GTO, his anger had begun to flag. But now, studying the ruddy geography, his rage found new life. 

* * * * *

Lalo arrived at Héctor’s modest ranch-style home a little after noon, carrying two grocery bags— ingredients for tamales. He spent the next few hours assembling the tamales in Héctor’s lacklustre kitchen. He mixed the masa by hand and simmered the pork until it smelled like home. As he worked, he pictured the heavy iron lock hanging impotently from his gate, opened from the inside. He carefully folded the filling into the cornhusks and then placed the tamales in the fridge.

After grabbing a pack of cigarettes, Lalo headed for the patio beyond the sliding glass doors. Behind Héctor’s house sat a decently-sized swimming pool. Beyond that, a lawn of manicured grass much too green for the climate. Beyond that, a seemingly endless stretch of desert. The border was undesigned, so lush green grass met dry cracked ground with no regard for its unnatural juxtaposition. Lalo walked to that edge and set to work collecting sticks and large stones from the rocky soil. He stacked his collection in the middle of the lawn and then he headed for the tool shed, where he found a shovel and a tarp. He took them with him to the poolside, where he sat down in a deck chair. The shadows grew longer on the pavement as he chainsmoked. He blinked and the sky was ten shades darker. Odd. He glanced at his watch. It was almost nine. As if on cue, the doorbell rang.

When Lalo answered the door, he didn’t bother with a greeting. He ushered Ocho Loco to follow him— “ _ven, ven,”_ — through the glass doors. Ocho Loco, looking a bit flustered, heeled like a well-trained dog.

Lalo dragged the shovel and one of the deck chairs to the edge of the yard. He handed Ocho Loco the shovel. “Start digging a hole. Over by the pile of rocks.” 

Ocho Loco’s eyes were wide. Had Lalo been in a better mood, he would have found it adorable. A cock of an eyebrow made his impatience clear, and Ocho Loco scurried for the yard. Lalo retreated back into the house. He returned with a heaping plate of tamales in hand, which he placed on the deck chair by the yard. He sat on the edge of the chair, eying Ocho Loco and the hole. 

“That’s deep enough.” 

Ocho Loco seemed surprised. Clearly he had been expecting to dig much deeper. 

“Start lining the hole with rocks.”

Ocho Loco did as he was told without question. He was crouched on his hands and knees, staining his lightly washed jeans.

“It’s called a _pib_ ,” Lalo explained as he watched. “It’s an underground oven. This is how they make tamales in Yucatán. My old cook, Yolanda, that’s where she’s from.”

Ocho Loco didn’t answer, seemingly too focused on the task at hand. Or maybe he was too scared. 

“Now you stack the tinder over the rocks, light it up, and stack more rocks on top of that. Those will conduct heat.”

Ocho Loco worked silently and dutifully. Maybe Lalo should have brought him to Mexico instead of Ignacio. He turned around and grabbed the plates of tamales. He knelt down beside Ocho Loco and began stacking the tamales in the hole. 

“When I was little, Yolanda used to spend hours preparing tamales. She’d let my sisters help her, but not me! I was her little man, so she’d send me out behind the house to collect stones and build the _pib_ all by myself. As she got older, though, she got a little softer, so she finally let me help in the kitchen. And, of course, I was even better than my sisters! So now I make the tamales and you, Ocho Loco,” Lalo jabbed his finger in the young man’s direcion, “you build the _pib_.”

Lalo grabbed the tarp and spread it over the tamales. 

“Traditionally, palm fronds are used, but those aren’t so readily available here in Albuquerque, eh?”

Ocho Loco shook his head. Together, they spread the dirt over the tarp with their hands, covering it until it resembled a fresh grave. 

Lalo stood and wiped his hands on a handkerchief he produced from his back pocket. He peered down at Ocho Loco, his face pulled into a frown. “Yolanda died last night.”

“I’m sorry.” Ocho Loco’s voice was shockingly raw and sincere.

Lalo scoffed. “Sorry? What’s the point of being sorry? When’s the last time being sorry did you do any good?”

“I don’t think the point is to do yourself goo—”

“You know what a productive emotion is? Anger. Rage. The kind of fury that works inside you like an industrial generator, you know? You ever get really, _really_ angry, man? So angry you think your veins might burst?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

Lalo clapped him on the shoulder. “We should work on that. Hey, you want a beer? I got some Modelos in the fridge. _Ven!_ ”

Lalo led him inside and asked him to make himself at home amongst Héctor’s plush, brown leather living room set. Lalo retreated to his room to find his gun. It sat in the drawer of his bedside table, right next to some condoms and a small bottle of lube. Lalo’s mind snapped back to the night before. Was the only reason Nacho had decided to forego a condom because he thought Lalo would be dead by the morning? He suddenly felt the urge to shower. 

Lalo left the bedroom with the gun in his hand. He stopped by the kitchen to grab a beer for his guest, but decided against one for himself. (One would have been fine, but who knew how long he would have to keep Ocho Loco entertained. Better not start something he couldn’t finish. The last thing he needed was to lose his clear head— he had to remember this night).

Ocho Loco sat on the couch, watching the _pib_ in the backyard through the big sliding glass doors. Lalo stopped a few paces behind the couch, set the beer on the ground, and fished his cell phone from his jeans pocket. He raised the gun and trained it on the back of Ocho Loco’s head. With his other hand, he flipped his phone open and turned on the camera. He held the phone close to his own face, capturing the gun in the foreground and Ocho Loco in the middle ground. Making sure the flash was off, he snapped the picture and then inspected the image. _Perfecto._ He squinted at the screen. 

He couldn’t remember how to text a photo. His niece, Alma, had shown him once, but now all he could remember was how she teased him and not how to actually do it. He tucked the gun in the back of his pants and picked up the beer. He rounded the couch and handed Ocho Loco his beer. As he did so, he snapped another picture, this time with the flash on. Ocho Loco blinked in surprise. 

“It’s for Ignacio,” Lalo explained. “I’m gonna try to reach him again. Maybe if he sees how much fun we’re having he’ll want to come join us, huh?” Lalo took a moment to carefully inspect his phone. “Gah, you know what? I don’t know how to text a picture. Can you show me?” He thrust his phone at Ocho Loco. 

He cautiously took the phone from Lalo and Lalo plopped down on the couch next to him. He threw Lalo a dubious look as Lalo peered over his shoulder. Before he could hit “send,” Lalo plucked the phone from his hands. He deleted the image, replaced it with the first one, and sent it off. Now all he could do was wait. 

  
  


* * * * *

Nacho arrived just twenty minutes later. Lalo hadn’t even been sure he’d be in Albuquerque. There was no way he could have made it back to Elián’s on foot to retrieve his car, so how he’d made it back to New Mexico so quickly puzzled him. Maybe Fring had a car waiting for him outside Lalo’s home. Or maybe it was just another mystery about Ignacio that Lalo would never get to solve. Not after tonight. 

His face was hard and unreadable. Ocho Loco smiled at him, bright and friendly, and got nothing in return. Maybe Nacho didn’t want to make him jealous, Lalo mused. 

“You know what?” Lalo brought a hand to the back of Ocho Loco’s neck and squeezed. “Ignacio and I actually have some business to discuss. I’ll see you on Thursday for collections, yeah?”

Ocho Loco glanced at Nacho. His face softened a little and he put a hand on Ocho Loco’s shoulder. “I’ll see you later, Mingo,” he said gently. Maybe he did want to make Lalo jealous.

With a pat on his friend’s shoulder and a nod to Lalo, Ocho Loco was gone, leaving the two of them standing alone in the foyer. Nacho looked up at him under his thick, knitted brows.

“So, here I am.”

“Here you are,” Lalo echoed. He ran a hand through his hair. “We never got to have that drink. But first . . .” He held his arms out to the side. Nacho mirrored the gesture. 

Lalo stepped into his space. He could tell Ignacio hadn’t showered since he’d last seen him, but it wasn’t an offensive smell. He ran his hands up his sides, moving wider and wider with his torso, and then over his pectorals, his deltoids, and his biceps, all the way to his wrists. Lalo met his gaze and found Ignacio stone-faced. He didn’t gasp or trembled as Lalo’s hands moved lightly over his body. With a pang of remorse, Lalo realized he had been hasty the night before. He hadn’t taken the time necessary to appreciate all of the dips and swells of the hard, sculpted musculature. Maybe if he had, they would have spent all night in bed together and Ignacio wouldn’t have had time to let the assassins into his home. 

He wrapped his arms beneath Ignacio’s so he could feel his shoulder blades. It was awkward— a couple of inches of space between their chest kept it from being an embrace, and with his height he had to look over the top of Ignacio’s head. His hands drifted down his back and stopped just short of his ass. He grasped the butt of the gun stuck into the back of Ignacio’s pants. It took a second to yank it free from the tight denim. Lalo tucked it into the waistband of his own jeans, next to his own gun. He knelt down, knees spread wide, and looked up. Ignacio dropped his arms and looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his gaze. It didn’t matter. He brought his hands to his upper thigh, one resting on his flank and one just beneath his crotch. He moved them down the tapered thigh, over the calf, and down the ankle. Nothing. He repeated the motion on the other leg. A clip, tucked into the boot. Lalo stood and put the clip in his pocket. He patted Ignacio’s shoulder.

“ _Bien_.” 

He led Ignacio to the bedroom. He got on his hands and knees and pulled a small safe from underneath the bed. He placed the clip and both guns inside. As he stood, he smiled at Nacho.

“There. Now we can have a pleasant evening.” 

Lalo walked to the kitchen, listening to Ignacio steps in line behind him, at least two meters back. He had wanted to share with him his favorite cognac, but all Héctor had was scotch. It would do. He grabbed some of the nicer glassware and a bucket of ice. He opened the lid to make sure it held an ice pick. Carrying it all in his arms, he led his guest through the sliding glass doors. In the low light, Ignacio peered towards the lawn at the freshly packed dirt covering the _pib_. He opened his mouth, but Lalo hurriedly ushered him to the deck chairs at the edge of the concrete patio. Lalo set the glass and the scotch down on the table in between the chairs and set to work stabbing at the ice with the ice pick. When he was done, he placed the ice pick back in the bucket, dropped some ice in their glasses, and poured the scotch. Nacho sat on the front of his chair, elbows resting on his knees. Ocho Loco’s departure seemed to have opened a release valve on his tension, and now his posture exuded a resigned casualness contrary to the gravity of the situation. Lalo sat on his own chair and offered Nacho a glass. Tonight, he didn’t bother with a toast. 

“So, Fring. He offered you money, power? What could he give you that my family hasn’t already given you?”

The edge of Nacho’s lips curled. If Nacho were any other man, he would have called it a smile, but Nacho had a great talent for draining all the humor and joy from a smile until it sat on his face like an old door mat. He took a sip from his glass. “Nah, man, it wasn’t like that.”

“Then what did he do to you, Ignacio? Hmm? Did he threaten you?”

Nacho’s face hardened. He shook his head. 

“He threaten your _chicas_?”

Nacho’s eyes were glassy. He wasn’t looking at Lalo, but rather over his shoulder, straight down the barrel at nothing. Rage sparked inside him. 

“Look at me.”

Nacho’s eyes drifted slowly back to Lalo’s face.

“No.”

No. Of course not. It was always the family. 

“Your _papá_?”

Nacho’s expression was passive. He nodded, just once.

Lalo’s blood turned hot. He scowled at Nacho. “You think Fring would hurt your _papá_ worse for your disobedience than I would for your disloyalty? Bullshit.”

Nacho set his mouth in a flat line and tilted his head. He considered Lalo for a long, pregnant moment.

“There was an offer.”

“Yeah?” Lalo’s impatience was approaching a boiling point. 

“But it wasn’t money, or power.” Nacho fell silent again. Did he expect Lalo to fill in the blank?

“Spit it out.”

“It didn’t come from Fring directly, but there was a . . . suggestion of freedom.”

“ _Freedom?_ From what?”

Something like laughter flashed across Ignacio's face— but no, that couldn’t be it. It was such an unusual look on him, and this was certainly not the time for it. 

“This isn’t my life. I wish I had figured it out a long time ago, and I’m sorry for that.” His expression was baked in a bizarre earnesty. It wasn’t an expression often found in their line of work. 

Lalo seethed. “Do you think you’re better than me, Ignacio? I was born into this. You chose it.”

Ignacio’s eyes focused on him like he was seeing him for the first time. Lalo had to grip the armrests of his pool chair to keep from crossing his arms over his chest defensively. 

“I don’t think I’m better than you.”

Despite all his lies, Lalo believed him. 

He sighed and studied the dancing water in the pool. LED lights illuminated it from below, turning it a bright azure, an attractive shade in the dark of the night. 

“So why are you here, Ignacio?” 

Lalo turned back to look at him. His eyebrows were knitted in confusion. “What?”

“Why aren’t you with your _papá_ right now, running as far away from me as possible? Instead you come back here, and all I had to do was send you a picture of little Ocho Loco.”

For a long time, Ignacio said nothing. When he finally did speak, his voice was small. “Domingo.”

“Sunday? What happens Sunday?”

“No. _Domingo Molina_. That’s his name, not ‘Ocho Loco.’” 

Ah. Just like Fring, Nacho had stretched his definition of “family” a little too far. “You can’t get so attached, Ignacio. It’s not healthy.”

Nacho heaved a deep sigh and buried his face in his hand. Lalo had seen him irritated before, but never had it been laid so bare. Oddly, it eased something in Lalo. If Ignacio wasn’t bothering to hide his exasperation, he must realize exactly what was about to happen to him. And he wasn’t afraid. He chose to spend those precious moments feeling annoyed by Lalo rather than begging for his mercy. Men like him— men like Andrés— never did. Strong, brave, clever Ignacio. What a waste.

Lalo stood and offered Nacho his hand. Nacho took it and rose to his feet.

“Go kneel by the pool.” 

Nacho did as he was told. Lalo wondered if he was this obedient with Fring. Lalo turned back to the small table between their deck chairs and picked up the ice bucket. 

Turning around, he approached Nacho slowly. Even kneeling, he maintained an arresting kind of dignity. His hands were folded neatly in his lap. His chin was held high. Maybe he had already seen to his father’s safety, Lalo considered. In his self-assured posture, Nacho looked like a man who knew he had done everything he could. Or, maybe, it was the look of a man out of options. Either way, there was a cool serenity in his resignation. A man ready to die. Lalo bounced the ice bucket in his grip, testing it’s weight. Satisfied, he swung it by the handle, full force, and connected with Nacho’s skull. He fell to the pavement and groaned. Lalo wished he had been this quick to make noise when they fucked. Nacho rolled onto his side and spit blood across the pavement, but Lalo pressed him flat on his back with a foot to his chest. His head dangled over the edge of the pool.

Lalo straddled Nacho and sat squarely on his chest. He leaned over him and gripped the edge of the pool. He breathed in deeply and appreciated, for the last time, the subtle scent of Nacho’s cologne beneath his own natural musk. He fished the ice pick from the bucket. Without fanfare, he pressed it into Nacho’s temple, right behind that vein he would see pulsing on occasion. A small spot of red bloomed around the silver head of the pick. Lalo clenched his jaw and stared, mesmerized. With a slight movement of his wrist, he drove the pick a little deeper. At the edge of his awareness he heard a sharp inhale. The blood began to trickle from the wound, drawing a line from Ignacio’s temple, across the curve of his skull, to the back of his scalp, and into the water below. It made a loud dripping sound as it splashed into the water, coloring it a lovely desaturated red. Maybe there was a whimper or a sob beneath him, but if there was, it was drowned out by the sound of firecrackers in his head. Lalo tasted iron and realized he was biting the inside of his cheek. 

As he watched the blood, something itched at the back of his mind. Héctor, sitting in the nursing home, twitching his lip and tapping furiously at his bell. He tried to follow the thread, to listen to what his _tío_ was desperate to tell him, but that image was replaced with another. What his memory provided was lit like a movie set, bright and dramatic, totally unlike the soft light that the moon had actually cast that night. It was Andrés, lying naked across his fresh, white linen sheets with a bullet wound between his eyes. 

Lalo shifted his weight slightly, leaning into the hand gripping the lip of the pool on the other side of Nacho’s head. His eyes crept over to that hand, up his forearm, to the dark ink just below his elbow. The pressure on the ice pick lessened. 

In Lalo’s second semester of college, he took a class called “Introduction to Eastern Religions.” The class was taught by a dashing middle-aged man called Professor Philip E. Lin. It was one of the few classes Lalo attended with any regularly. Every two weeks was dedicated to a different faith. Five weeks in, on a day Lalo was desperately missing the heat of Chihuahua in the midst of a biting New England winter, he called Héctor to tell him he was considering moving to Tibet to become a Buddhist monk. Héctor had laughed for nearly an entire minute. “You’re only nineteen, mijo,” he’d said. “You’ll understand it all eventually.” Lalo couldn’t make sense of that, so he hung up even angrier than when he had called. Three weeks later, on a drunken night after a particularly gripping lecture on ancient Chinese philosophy, he had the yin and yang symbol tattooed on the inside of his forearm. It was heavily stylized, with curling tendrils defining the two halves. The ornamentation wrapped around his arm in a thick band, dissolving into a visual language more evocative of the traditional art of his own home. Decades later, Lalo couldn’t remember jack shit about the liturgy of Buddhism, Taoism, or Shintoism. But from time to time, he would still look down at his arm and remember the dreamy Dr. Lin lecturing about the primordial chaos of the universe organizing itself into opposite forces necessitating and propagating one another in endless cycles. Contrasting, but complementing. Balanced. Lalo looked back at Nacho. His eyes were empty now, but they were the same liquid amber he had searched for in vain as he peered out into the desert on the drive from his ruined home back to Albuquerque. In the past few months, that color had come to ground him, to make him feel steady. Balanced. 

For the first time, he considered how he would feel with Ignacio dead. He knew exactly what he would do— he would take care of Fring, go back to México, rebuild his home, and then he would get on with his life. He’d continue to grow filthy rich in the most exciting ways possible. Nacho would stay buried in the scrublands behind Héctor’s house, soon to be sold to some _gringo_ couple who would know nothing of the blood in the soil. The sound of firecrackers in Lalo’s head morphed into the sound of a man wailing, wailing, and wailing. Years from now, would he be able look down at the ink on his arm and believe what it was telling him? That there was balance in the universe?

He didn’t want to need it, but he did. The dark never asked to live with the light, but it wouldn’t exist without it. They were perpetually entangled, one never to be rid of the other. 

Lalo sat back on his heels. His arm fell to his side, hand still gripping the ice pick. The blood from the wound in Nacho’s head began to flow faster. He tried to remember how he felt after shooting Andrés, but he couldn’t. Lalo scrubbed a hand over his face. He felt tired and old. Sometimes, he could become very upset thinking about how, at every moment, he was older than he had ever been before.

He recalled another lesson from Dr. Lin— “action in non-action.” The Taoist principle _wu wei_. He struggled to think of the context. Something about personal harmony. Or was it a tenet of good governance? He glanced back at Nacho, who was looking back at him with new bewilderment. Lalo wanted to laugh. He was confused, too. He wished he’d paid better attention in class. His thoughts felt disorganized and tenuously strung together. Maybe he needed to get more sleep. Those words thundered in his ears, “action in non-action,” whatever that meant. He realized this was a ridiculous time to recall old college memories. He sighed and tossed the ice pick in the pool. It quickly sank to the bottom.

“You’re gonna help me take care of Fring.” He studied Nacho’s face. Did he understand this wasn’t mercy— purely a tactical measure? But the words sounded thin, even to his own ears.

Ignacio stared back up at him with his big, beautiful, amber eyes, his brow furrowed. He didn’t move a muscle. 

Lalo reached into his back pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, which he used to dab at the side of Nacho’s head. Slowly, the wound stopped leaking into the pool. The night was much quieter without the incessant dripping. He pulled the handkerchief back to inspect the wound. He frowned.

“Ay, you think that’s gonna leave a scar?”

Nacho made a noise, faint and vaguely incredulous.

Lalo laughed and ran his free hand over Nacho’s bare scalp. “You’ll be fine— just grow your hair out!”

Nacho didn’t even pretend to be amused, but Lalo could forgive him for not being in the mood for jokes. He pressed the stained handkerchief into Nacho's hand, which he guided by the wrist to his temple. Nacho held it against the wound. 

The wind turned, carrying with it a deliciously savory smell. Lalo peered back down at Nacho with his eyebrows raised. 

“Hey. Do you like tamales?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He stood and marched towards the lawn, leaving Nacho lying flat on his back next to the glassy blue pool swimming with his blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tattoo stuff was weird, right? Basically, for a while now I've wanted to write something that reconciles Tony Dalton's tattoo with Lalo's personality. I mean, the implications of Lalo having a yin & yang tattoo is that he is or once was a spiritual person. (Or he has no clue what it means, but come one, our guy's pretty clever). If he's a spiritual person, to any degree, that's an untapped well for motivation. Mostly, I tried to make it jive with the life philosophies for Lalo that Tony Dalton's described in interviews. Lalo having some sense of spirituality opens up totally knew avenues to explore why he does what he does, so I thought it'd be fun to figure out a way to use Lalo's spirituality to save Nacho. It's ridiculous, and far-fetched, but I had to try it. No apologies!


End file.
